Personal Backup X9 Benutzerhandbuch

Welcome to the User Manual for Intego Personal Backup X9, Intego's program for backing up and synchronizing data, and for creating bootable backups of a Mac OS X startup volume. Use the Table of Contents below to go to the different sections of the manual. For information about installing Personal Backup and updating the program with Intego NetUpdate, see the Intego Getting Started Manual.

Intego Personal Backup can also synchronize data between two computers (such as a desktop Mac and a MacBook or MacBook Pro), or create a bootable backup of your entire Mac OS X volume. And, of course, it restores files to your computer as easily as it backs them up.

At its simplest, backing up files with Personal Backup requires dragging and dropping a couple of folders and clicking the Backup button. For more complex tasks, Personal Backup's advanced mode lets you create backup tasks that perform multiple actions, and that can run on predetermined schedules.

About Your Copy of Personal Backup X9

To get information about your copy of Personal Backup X9, choose Personal Backup X9 > About Personal Backup X9. It gives information about Personal Backup X9, such as the version number, your serial number, and a clickable link to Contact Support.

Deauthorizing Intego Software

Intego software comes with a license that allows you to use the software on at least one Mac (standard license), three Macs, or even more if you have a business license. When you install Intego software on one of your Macs and serialize it, that Mac is considered to be authorized for one seat of your license. If you have multiple copies of the software installed, and wish to use it on a different Mac, you will need to deauthorize the software for one Mac and serialize it on another Mac.

To deauthorize any Intego software including Personal Backup, open the program, then click the program name menu and choose Deauthorize Personal Backup…

Remember to deauthorize your Intego software if you sell one of your Macs and wish to use the software on a new device.

2. Getting Started with Personal Backup X9

About Backups

Personal Backup performs the following operations:

Backup

A Backup copies specific files and folders, or the contents of entire volumes or hard drives, from one location to another. The location that contains files at the beginning of the process is called the source; the one receiving the copied files is the destination. To keep the backup files safe, the destination files should be stored and never modified, and should be on a different storage device from the source. For example, you might back up files from your MacBook onto an external hard disk that you keep at home: then, if the MacBook gets lost or stolen, you still have copies of your files on the hard disk.

One common backup strategy is to make a copy of all your files when you first run Personal Backup. Then on each subsequent run, you direct the program to copy only those files that have changed since the last backup. This is called an "incremental" backup. (Don't worry - Personal Backup makes these easy.)

Bootable Backup

A Bootable Backup copies a volume with Mac OS X on it to a second hard disk so the new location can act as a startup disk. The bootable backup process creates an exact duplicate of the source, so the destination can function exactly as the source. If you have a system problem on your Mac, you can connect the backup disk, restart your Mac while holding down the Option key, select the backup disk and start up your Mac. You can copy all the user files on your Mac to a safe location, then "restore" the bootable backup to your Mac by performing a bootable backup in the opposite direction. You'll then be up and running without having to reinstall Mac OS X, its system updates, and your own applications.

Synchronize

Synchronize twins a source's contents so both the source and destination are identical. The first time you run a synchronization, Personal Backup may copy many files to ensure that both the source and destination contain the same elements. But after that, only those files that are changed on one side are copied to the other side, and, by default, items removed from one side are deleted from the other. Since you may update some files on, say, your desktop Mac and others on your laptop, a synchronization can keep both of these Macs up to date with the latest versions of each file. Changing file A on your desktop Mac and file B on your laptop means that, when synchronizing the two Macs, file A will be copied to the laptop and file B to the desktop Mac. The result is that the source and destination are always maintained as exact duplicates of each other.

Restore

Restore is the opposite of backing up, and is usually performed when source files have disappeared or become damaged (or when you've accidentally deleted some). You copy files from the destination disk back to the original source. (In our example above, these files would go from the external hard drive to your MacBook.) Of course, these files will only be current as of the last time you performed a backup: if you've modified those files since then, that subsequent work will be lost - hence the need to make regular backups.

Backup Decisions

Before you implement your backup plan, determine four things:

Source: Which files will I back up?

Destination: Where will these backup files be stored?

Schedule: When and how often will I perform these backups?

Archives: How long will I keep backup files?

If you can't make up your mind right away, don't worry: you can have several backup strategies running concurrently. For example, you might decide to make daily backups of important business files that are then delivered to an offsite location (such as a safe-deposit box) once a week. On the other hand, perhaps you consider photos and videos of office renovations much less important, so you back them up only once a month to a server in the office.

Source

Two criteria help you make decisions regarding which Source files to backup: the files' importance, and the amount of space available for backup. If, for example, you have a 250 GB hard drive in your MacBook, and a 1 TB external hard drive available for backups, your decision is easy: back up everything, since there's no reason to save a few gigabytes when you have so many to spare.

If you're short on space, your decisions are more complicated. Which files will cause the most inconvenience if lost? Which are irreplaceable? For most people, personal and business documents come first; think of all your family photos and videos, and any music you've bought by download, as well as any tax records, accounting software files, receipts in electronic format, and your e-mail. Then, if there's additional space, applications and system files are important. On Mac OS X, most of your personal documents are stored in the Documents folder of your home folder. But if you have room, don't forget the Pictures, Movies, and Music folders! These are also in your home folder, next to your Documents folder.

Destination

The Destination for your backups could be on the same device as the source, although we recommend you use an external device for all backups except the most casual (and insecure). The problem with the source and destination existing on the same device is that a problem with that device (such as a hard drive crash) could easily destroy both your originals and your backups, leaving you with nothing.

Instead, we recommend you make backups to another device, such as an external hard drive. (Note that high-capacity external hard drives are relatively inexpensive.) To save space (and copying time over a network), Personal Backup can make incremental backups that replace only those files that have changed or been created since the last backup.

We recommend you take the total size of your source files and budget at least twice as much space on your destination disk. This ensures that there is enough room for the many files that change from one backup to the next. If you are merely making a clone of your hard disk, however, you can use an external hard disk that is the same size as your internal disk.

Schedule

Your backup Schedule depends on how often you change the original files. Ask yourself this: how long will it take to recreate changes made to lost files? For example, let's say you start working intensively on a file at 9 am. If you lose it due to a crash or power outage at noon, you'll probably need three hours to restore the file - if that's even possible.

To ensure that you don't lose such data, you should regularly back up your files. For critical data, a backup of working files to external media (or a network location) every few hours is wise, and for professional documents, you may want to run hourly backups. Then, complete daily or weekly backups provide additional protection to cover all files, whether you have worked on them or not.

Archives

Again, scheduling decisions will depend on the amount of space available on your destination device. If you have plenty of space compared to the total size of your source files, and are able to perform backups conveniently, there's no reason not to do them every day. Consider how long you'll want to keep Archives of your backups. A financial-services company might be required by law to retain computer data for several years: such a company would want to ensure that it always has a definitive copy of each file stored away in case auditors come around. However, it probably won't need to access those old files frequently, or at all: therefore, it would probably store them in a compressed format (to save space), at an offsite location.

On the other hand, home users might want to make backups only to ensure that they can recover the most recent versions of their files, not caring about older versions. For them, the best solution might be to back up their Macs to external drives, automatically discarding old versions as they go.

Finally, it's a good idea to create a bootable backup of your Mac OS X startup volume on an external hard drive in case you suffer major disk problems or cannot start up your Mac for other reasons. Then, if problems occur, you can restart your Mac from this disk and get to work immediately.

In any case, you should develop a backup strategy that corresponds to the way you work-and perform regular backups.

Using Tasks to Automate Backups

Regardless of whether you create a backup, synchronization, or bootable backup, the specific details of your session are called a "task". (You don't need a task to restore files, however.)

There are three advantages to using tasks. First, they ensure that you back up the same files, in the same way, every time; second, tasks can trigger actions from other programs and Mac OS X; third, Personal Backup lets you schedule tasks to run periodically without requiring your attention.

For example, you might create a task that does the following every day at 5 pm:

Selects all spreadsheet documents that are under 20 MB;

Scans them with Intego VirusBarrier X9;

Backs them up, keeping only the two latest versions, then;

Shuts down your Mac.

Your First Backup

Making your first backup is simple. First, launch Intego Personal Backup X9; there are two ways to do this:

If you haven't created any tasks already in a previous version of Personal Backup, the first time you launch the program it displays a window with three default tasks, a backup, bootable backup, and a synchronization task, none of which have source, destination or options defined.

To create a first backup, click the "Add new Backup task" to select it. Next, add your source. To do this, select from one of the options presented, or drag its folder - that is, the one containing files you want to back up - from the Finder to the area labeled 'What do you want to back up?'. (You can also click Connect to Server... or Select Other... and navigate to the source folder through Mac OS X's file selection window.)

Do the same for the backup's destination.

The window will now highlight which folder you intend to back up, and where they're going.

Then click the Add button in the bottom right corner of the window:

Personal Backup will back up all the files from the source folder to the destination folder or volume, except for those you don't have permission to copy. That's it! You now have a spare copy of all files in the source, ready in case any of the original files disappear.

But Personal Backup does much more than the simple backup described here; the next chapter details all the options that give it the power to satisfy everyone's backup needs, from the single-Mac home user to the corporate administrator of thousands of computers.

3. Preparing to Backup Your Files

Using Personal Backup Tasks

Regardless of whether you use Personal Backup for backups, synchronizations or bootable backups, you can tell the program what you want it to do by creating a task that you can then execute whenever you want. A task consists of two parts:

Indication of the source of files to copy and their destination.

Options that control such matters as when a backup will run, what happens before and after it runs, what to do with duplicate files, and so forth.

If you haven't created any tasks already in a previous version of Personal Backup, the first time you launch the program it displays a window with three default tasks, a backup, bootable backup, and a synchronization task, none of which have source, destination or options defined.

To create a second task, click the 'Add new task' button.

You can also choose File > New Task from the menu bar, or press Command-N on your keyboard.

(A description of each of these is in the About Backups section of this manual.)

We've chosen a Backup task, which results in a new task named "Backup".

If you do the same thing again, you'll notice a second task underneath the first one, titled "Backup 2".

Depending on your Mac's screen settings, you might not see the tasks's full name. But you can fix that if necessary. First, hover the cursor over the vertical dividing line between the list of tasks and the rest of the window. You'll know it's in the right place when it turns into a thick vertical line with two small arrows on either side. Then, drag it to the right until you can see all your tasks' full names.

Let's say you want to delete that second task. Right-click or press the Control (Ctrl) key while clicking the task's name until a menu appears, then choose Delete.

In either case, a dialog box will ask you to confirm your choice.

Now you have just one task called "Backup." To change this, click its name in the left column, then type in its new name. Once you hit the tab, enter, or return key, it will reflect the new name.

You set up synchronization and bootable backup tasks in exactly the same way as backup tasks, although with different default names, icons and tabs to help you differentiate them.

Sources and Destinations for Tasks

So now you have one or more tasks set up and named: the next step is to determine which files will be copied, and where they'll go. The process is similar for backups, bootable backups, and synchronizations; however, there are enough differences among them that we'll look at each separately.

As used here, a "source" is the location of files to be backed up, put into a bootable backup, or synchronized. A "destination" is where copies of the files will go.

Backups are the most flexible in terms of sources and destinations. You can define multiple backup sources, for example to duplicate the contents of several folders, or even several network volumes, to one destination. Backup sources don't have to be on computers running Mac OS X: in fact, they don't have to run any operating system at all. That means you can back up from an external disk, network volume, memory stick, iPod, or any other Mac OS X-readable medium in addition to computer drives. Further, you can back up to any Mac OS X-writable medium.

You can synchronizefrom any folder or volume to any folder or volume. But unlike with a backup, you can't synchronize individual files, or synchronize from multiple sources.

A bootable backup is the most specific type of action, as its source must be an entire disk or volume that contains a bootable copy of Mac OS X, and its destination must be a medium that can be booted. (Personal Backup does not create bootable backups on DVDs.)

Creating Sources and Destinations

Regardless of whether you're making a backup, bootable backup, or synchronization, you define sources and destinations through the task window of Personal Backup,

There are four ways of indicating sources and destinations:

Clicking in the source or destination area of the window and finding an item you want to use from the predefined list of options

Dragging and dropping items from the Finder to their locations in Personal Backup.

Using the Connect to Server... and Select Other... options that appear in the source and destination areas of Personal Backup's main window. These two options are discussed in further detail below.

Connect to Server

You can use a network drive as a source or destination; to do so, select Connect to Server... A dialog displays where you can enter information for your network drive:

First, enter an address. This can be a local address (such as iMac.local), which you can find in the Sharing pane of System Preferences on the Mac you want to mount; a Windows share (such as smb://servername); an FTP or SFTP server, identified by its address (ftp://example.com, or sftp://example.com); or a network volume on a remote computer, identified by its IP address. In each of these cases, you must enter a full address, including any volume and/or folder name. You can add any type of network volume that you can mount in the Finder: in fact, in most cases, the easiest way is to mount the volume in the Finder, then drag its icon onto the Address field in the above dialog.

If you check Connect as, and enter a name and password, Personal Backup will not prompt you for this information when running its task.

Select Other

You can search from Finder for a source or destination for your tasks. To do this, click Select Other... you'll see a window where you select an item or search from Finder.

You can use the 'Keep items selected' box to select files and folders from several locations when choosing a Source. This option is not available for Destinations.

Disk Images

When creating a Bootable Backup task, you can also use a disk image as a destination. You'll see the following:

Click ASR Disk Image... and you will see

In this window, choose a name for your disk image and select a location by clicking Where.

When you run the task the first time, Personal Backup creates the disk image. Each subsequent time, Personal Backup mounts the existing disk image if it is in the same location. If you move it, though, Personal Backup will create a new disk image with the same name, so you should make sure to leave the .dmg file in the appropriate location.

Personal Backup doesn't ask you to choose a size for the disk image; Personal Backup determines the appropriate size. If you run a subsequent backup, Personal Backup enlarges the size of the disk image if necessary. You therefore don't need to worry about how big it is.

Note: Personal Backup will automatically choose to create a disk image for Backup tasks when needed.

Changing Sources and Destinations

Once you've chosen a source or destination, you can change it by clicking another option. Options vary depending on whether you're working on a backup, bootable backup, or synchronization.

A backup source can be pretty much anything. You can create a task that backs up a single file, a folder, a volume, or entire drive, or combinations of any of these, spread among multiple devices.

Type of task

Options

Backup source

Edit the current choice by clicking the Edit Settings button, then selecting a new choice.

A single location - a folder, volume, or drive - on any Mac OS X-writable medium.

Same as backup source, except that Keep items selected is not available.

Synchronization source

A single folder, volume, or drive, on any Mac OS X-writable medium.

Same choices as backup source, above.

Synchronization destination

A single folder, volume, or drive, on any sort of Mac OS X-writable medium.

Same choices as synchronization source.

Bootable backup source

Shows all volumes that contain a bootable copy of Mac OS X.

Bootable backup destination

Shows all currently mounted volumes that are capable of containing Mac OS X, plus the option ASR Disk Image, which creates a single file that contains the full contents of the bootable backup's source. This file is portable, and can be used to produce multiple copies of the source disk, for example to standardize the contents of all Macs on a network.

Obviously, a bootable backup's destination can't be the same as its source. If you attempt to make them the same, Personal Backup intelligently changes the previously chosen one so they're not the same.

Exporting and Importing Tasks

To export a task, click it in the task window, then either choose File > Save As… or press Command-Shift-S.

Name the task and choose a location for the file using Where. Click Save when finished.

To import a task that's been exported, whether from your copy of Personal Backup or someone else's, double-click the tasks's icon in the Finder or drag and drop it into Personal Backup.

Exported tasks are plain-text XML files that store all the tasks's options, including the locations of sources and destinations. If you move the task to a Mac that doesn't have the source or destination in the same location, the task will open but not run.

Personal Backup Task Options

At this point you know how to set up Personal Backup tasks to create backups, bootable backups, and synchronizations; how to show which files should be backed up; and how to transfer them among Macs where Personal Backup is installed. You can run any of these tasks by clicking the one you want in the top menu and selecting Start Now. But Personal Backup gives you much, much more control over operations than you've seen so far, through Task Options.

Virtually all of Personal Backup's custom options - such as when a task runs, what happens before and after it runs, what it does when it encounters duplicate files, and so forth - are set in the task's options, which appear at the bottom of the task window after choosing Edit Settings. They are:

How do you want to back up?. Each of the three task types - backup, bootable backup, and synchronization - offers a set of choices specific to that task. These involve the number of backups to keep; what to do when a file has been changed on both the source and the destination disk; and so forth.

How often you want to back up?. You can make a task run periodically. Schedules can have several parts, so for example you could direct Personal Backup to run a backup every Monday and Wednesday at 5pm, or on the first of every month.

Advanced Settings

Before starting. You can set Personal Backup to run another program before starting its task. You can direct Personal Backup to run any program, including a custom AppleScript that, in turn, runs several other programs.

The Permission section asks whether you want Personal Backup to copy only those files that you have permission to read, or whether it should use administrator authority to copy all files. To copy all files, you must enter a user name and password belonging to someone with administrator-level permissions. To determine who that is on your Mac, choose System Preferences… from the Apple menu, and open the Accounts preference pane by clicking its icon: users with such power will have "Admin" under their names.

Do not copy files if. Personal Backup has selectors that give you wide-ranging control over which files are copied. You can choose to back up (or not back up) files based on their visibility, name, kind, path, size, date created, date modified, label, or any combination of these criteria.

After running. Like the Before starting option, After running lets you direct Personal Backup to run a program (or AppleScript) after the task is finished. It also lets you choose whether to run another Personal Backup task.

Each set of options shows up in its own section at the bottom of the task's window. But you don't need to specify any of these options: if you don't, the task will simply run using Personal Backup's default options.

Schedules

You can run a Personal Backup task at any time by pressing the Start Now button in the main window. But much of the convenience of backup and synchronization operations is in setting them to run periodically, without your intervention or attention. For example, you might want a backup task to run automatically whenever you plug in an external hard drive, or synchronize two computers whenever they're on the same network together. Schedules make this possible.

The Frequency section lets you direct Personal Backup to run the selected task periodically. Select how often you want the task to run by selecting a period from the popup menu. The choices are:

Minutely: Select the number of minutes.

Hourly: Select the number of hours.

Daily: Select the time of day.

Weekly: Select the day of the week, and the time on that day.

Monthly: Select the day of the month, and the time on that day.

When Volume is Connected: Automatically starts the task when the specified volume is visible to your Mac - for example, whenever you connect to a network, or turn on or plug in an external hard drive. Except for your Mac's startup drive, all volumes that are given as sources or destinations for this task are available; if both the sources and destination are on your Mac's startup drive, this option will not be available.

The other controls in this section are:

Wake up computer if needed allows you to put your Mac in its power-saving "sleep" mode, yet still be confident that Personal Backup will perform its scheduled task. Once the task is completed, the computer will remain on.

Keep computer awake during task allows you to prevent the computer from going to sleep during a scheduled task.

Before Starting

This option lets you run a program before Personal Backup makes its copies. That program could be a Mac application with a graphical interface, an AppleScript, a shell script, an Automator workflow, or even a sound file that you want to play when the task begins. When you check the Perform actions box, you'll see the Automator library box asking you to select the program to be run:

Drag actions or files into the window to build your workflow:

Exceptions

The first menu let you specify whether you want to not copy items matching any of the conditions you give, or all of them. For example, changing this selection could make the difference between not copying files with "cache" in their names, none of them, or those files together with others.

The next section lets you specify the type of information that you want the filter to find. The choices are: Name, File Size, Created (i.e., the date the file was "born"), Modified, Labels, Hidden, Kind and Item. After choosing one of these, you'll have the opportunity to specify filter details.

Clicking the + button at the right of the window adds an additional condition, while clicking the - button next to a condition removes it from the list. You can also modify filter conditions by simply changing their popup menu options or typing new data into the data fields.

In the example below, files will NOT be copied if they:

Are PDF files, or

Are modified before January 1st, 2016, or

Have the name "Finances".

Options Overview

Regardless of whether you're running a backup, bootable backup, or synchronization, you access the task's options in the same ways. (Available selections change depending on which type of task you've clicked in the task list at the top of the window.)

Backup Options

This section defines how many versions of copied files you wish to keep. (The Backup Decisions section of this manual will help you decide the best strategy for you.) By default, Personal Backup saves all old versions of your files until your backup disk is full, after which it deletes the oldest backups in order to have enough space for new ones. However, you can choose to save only a specific number of old versions based on file size. If you select: Create a carbon copy of the files to save, Personal Backup will overwrite files on the destination when they are newer than the source and remove files from the destination when they do not exist in the source.

Bootable Backup Options

Do you want to keep multiple versions of some files?: This option lets you keep multiple copies of older versions of your files in your Bootable Backup.

Synchronization Options

A synchronization coordinates the files contained in two folders or volumes so they both have the same versions of all files. The question arises when the same file has been changed on both the source and destination volumes: which one should be copied? The synchronization window lets you decide.

What to do when unsure of the action to perform?

Ask

Displays a window whenever it encounters a file that's been changed in both places.

In the window you see the name of the document. You have six options:

Decide Later if you want to resolve the conflict later. The files remain unchanged

Copy from (Bigger) if you want to copy the version that has a larger file size

Copy from (Newer) if you want to copy the version that was changed most recently

Stop Synchronization to stop the task from running and make changes

Decide later for all conflicts during this execution if you want to resolve all conflicts later. The files remain unchanged

Keep Both saves a copy of both files at the source and destination

You can show the file in the Finder by pressing the Reveal in Finder option. Select a Default Behavior allows you to change the action to something other than Ask, such as Pick newest or Pick from. Click the Continue button when you have made your decision. If you make no choice within 60 seconds, Personal Backup will act as though you clicked the Decide Later button.

Pick Newest

Personal Backup will always copy the version that was changed most recently.

Pick From

The Pick From options let you choose one of the two sources to be used for all operations. Personal Backup will always use the version of the file from the chosen location when a conflict occurs.

Whatever you choose, Personal Backup will erase previous versions so that only one version will remain on both the source and destination volumes. (Unless you override this behavior and save all previous versions by checking the Keep Both button in the Ask window.)

Synchronization Preview

So now you've set up your synchronization task. But what, exactly, will happen? How many files will be copied? In which direction? What if you want to make a temporary exception? With its Preview function, Personal Backup answers all these questions.

Click your synchronization task in the task list, then click the Preview button at the right of Personal Backup's main window.

The Preview part of the window will look something like this:

The left column shows the name of the file or folder to be copied; the center column shows what will happen to it; and the third column shows where the item will end up in the destination location.

Depending on which options you selected, your Mac's screen might be too small to see everything. You can change the width of columns to better see those that are most important to you. To do so, hover your cursor over the line to the right of the column head you want to expand or contract until it turns into a "double-arrow" cursor.

What if you see an item that you don't want copied? Of course you could create a rule in the Exceptions (see Exceptions in the Personal Backup Task Options) section), but Personal Backup gives you a much faster way to make individual exceptions: simply click the action for that item in the Action column: you'll see a popup menu, from which you can choose to Remove, Copy, or Ignore the file in question.

Once you've confirmed that the synchronization task will go as you like, you can run it by pressing the Continue button, or go back to the main window by clicking the Stop button.

After Running: Postprocessing Files

This option lets you run a program after Personal Backup makes its copies. That program could be a Mac application with a graphical interface, an AppleScript, a shell script, an Automator workflow, or even a sound file that you want to play when the task begins. When you check the Perform actions box, you'll see the Automator library box asking you to select the program to be run:

Drag actions or files into the window to build your workflow:

What Happens When You Click "Start Now"

At this point everything's set: you've chosen which files to copy, what Personal Backup will do with those files, how it will handle exceptions, and what it will do before and after the task is complete. Now it's time for action!

To run a task, click it in the left column, then click the Start Now button on the right side of the window.

For the most part, Personal Backup will run without your intervention: once a task's scheduled time arrives, or you press the Start Now button, the program does exactly what you directed, every time.

Personal Backup provides ways to inspect a backup or synchronization before, during, and after it has run. The Preview button shows you exactly which files will be copied for a synchronization; and the Show Details log keeps a record of past tasks, both successful and failed.

A backup is useless without a way to recover lost files. Personal Backup's Restore function lets you choose not only which files to return to their original places, but which versions of those files to keep. (See Backing Up and Restoring Files for more on restoring files.) Of course, since it stores files in their native format, you can also just drag them from one folder to another in Mac OS X.

4. Backing Up and Restoring Files

Running Backups, Bootable Backups, and Synchronizations

A backup or synchronization task starts when:

Its scheduled time arrives,

You click the Start Now button

In any case, you might see that Personal Backup is "Preparing" to copy your files, while it analyzes them to determine whether they do, in fact, need to be copied. (If your task involves a small number of files, you probably won't notice anything because the program checks them so quickly.)

A small icon also appears next to the task's name.

Once preparation is complete, this icon changes to show that the task is copying files.

The main section of Personal Backup's window also changes to look something like this:

At the top is a progress bar, showing how much has been copied, how much in total is to be copied, and an estimate of how much time the task will take to complete.

Finally, you can stop a task at any time by pressing the Stop button.

After a few moments, the main window will confirm that the task was successfully halted.

To temporarily stop a task, press the Pause button. It will turn into a button labeled Resume, which you can click to continue the task where it left off.

If you let a task run to its conclusion, you'll see a confirmation in the main window for Last Execution.

If Personal Backup encountered any problems, such as a file that couldn't be copied for some reason, the icon next to the Last Execution will also change to a red button, which will remain until the next successful run.

Two additional buttons appear in this window. The first, Show Details, lets you review what just happened (and the success or failure of past tasks).

Click the Edit Settings button to continue working with your Personal Backup task.

Logs: Reviewing What Happened

Click the Show Details button in the main window.

A window appears, listing every time your task has run.

The left column shows when the task started; on the right, its result. The list is sorted with the most recently run task at the top.

Clicking any line in the left column displays some details on that task.

You may want to save this information to a file. To do so:

Right-click the log entry you want and choose Save As...

Name the task file and select a location. Click the Save button when finished.

To remove entries from the log window, first right-click them and choose Delete, or press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Restoring: Recovering Lost Files

Let's say a disaster happens: you look for a file or folder on your Mac, and it's gone. No problem! Since you've been diligently running backups, you have a copy. (We'll discuss how to recover files from synchronizations below.)

For backup tasks, there are several ways to replace the missing items. The most obvious is to simply copy them in the Finder: unlike some backup programs, Personal Backup stores files in their Mac OS X-native file format. However, this plan only works if you know which files are missing or out of date, and where they are. Often if one file is missing, several are, and it's very easy to miss important files when you copy them one by one from various locations in the Finder.

A faster and more-thorough method is to use Personal Backup's Restore function, which you access by first clicking the Restore tab at the top of the main window and then select the task that created the files you wish to restore. Then by either choosing File > Restore from Destination... or clicking the Restore button at the bottom-right corner of Personal Backup's main window.

You'll see a window that shows a list of past tasks in the left column, and the files affected in the main section. The most-recent run is at the top, and is selected by default. However, you can choose any of the tasks's past runs by clicking it from the top of the main window: the contents of the main window will change to reflect files affected during that run.

At first you'll only see the task's top level, in this case the folder labeled Canon T1i dump: click the disclosure triangle at its left to reveal all the sources that are part of this task; click again to display its contents.

To restore items from a previous backup, simply click the desired item and either click the Restore button in the window's lower-right corner, or hold Control while clicking the folder and select Restore…. (The other option in the contextual menu, Reveal in Finder, will display that item on the task's destination volume-that is, the volume from which you'll retrieve the backup copy.) In the example below, we're restoring the contents of the entire backup.

After indicating where you want Personal Backup to put the restored files, you'll see a progress bar that shows how long the process will take.

If you choose the top-level folder (i.e., the name of the task), your files will be placed at the location you chose in a folder labeled with the task name.

Note: if you have deleted a task, you can still restore items from its backup folder. To do this, choose File > Restore from Destination or click the Restore Other... button in the left column, then select the top-level folder containing the backup you wish to restore. Since Personal Backup writes an invisible file containing backup information at this location, you will then see a restoration interface, such as that shown earlier. You can proceed with the restoration as explained above.

To leave Restore mode, click any other task option from the top of Personal Backup's main window.

The Restore function isn't available for synchronization tasks; if you need to recover files that were deleted on your source but exist still on your destination, you should do so manually, by copying them from the destination back to the source.

Bootable backup tasks don't offer the Restore function, as their purpose is to create a precise copy ("clone") of a computer volume. To restore a bootable backup, run a new bootable backup in the other direction: choose your destination as the source, and the source as destination.

5. Personal Backup X9 Preferences

Preferences

To access the program's preferences, either choose Personal Backup > Preferences…, or press Command-comma. A window will appear, showing the preferences.

Notifications

Show background task in Intego Task Manager: When checked, you'll see a small window appear whenever Personal Backup executes a scheduled task. When unchecked, such tasks will occur without notificationNotify when schedule has not been executed in __ days: Personal Backup can remind you when you have not backed up your files recently. By default, you will be reminded every two weeks (14 days). You can change this setting to any number of days you prefer. You can also disable this feature completely by unchecking the box.Send execution status by email to: You can also have Personal Backup send copies of the execution status to recipients of your choosing after a task completes. To do so, check this box, then enter the e-mail address where you would like to receive this information.

Schedules

Disable/ Enable Scheduled Tasks: Click this box to stop all scheduled tasks from running during your current computer session. This may be useful if you want to delay a scheduled backup while you work. Note: Personal Backup requires authentication to disable schedules. Type your password to allow this.

Scheduled tasks will always be enabled when you restart your computer. You can also re-enable them from Preferences at any time.

6. Personal Backup X9 Support

Personal Backup Knowledge Base and Support

If you still have questions about using your Personal Backup software and cannot find the answer in this User Manual, please check our Personal Backup Knowledge Base for answers to the most common questions by clicking the link below: